- #1
Chenkel
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- TL;DR Summary
- I've been watching a Walter Lewin lecture about gyroscopes, and I was wondering what makes a bicycle fall toward the inside of a turn.
Hello everyone!
I've been watching the following Walter Lewin lecture, the part that illustrates my question is part 17:19 of the video
Most things have made sense during this lecture, but one persistent question I have is the following: why does the bicycle tilt toward the inside of the curve when you're turning the front wheel? If the momentum of the wheel is pointing to the left, and you make a turn towards the left, the change in the torque, based on the right hand rule, should be vertical, and upwards! So I would expect the bike to tilt towards the outside of the leftward turn using the definitions of angular momentum. I see in reality the bike tilts toward the inner part of the turn, this can be seen in those videos of high powered sports motercycles, where they turn so much, that they literally are inches from the concrete. Maybe I'm missing something, and this tilt into the turn has nothing to do with angular momentum, but something is keeping those bikes from falling over, I'd like to know why, let me know what you guys think, thank you!
I've been watching the following Walter Lewin lecture, the part that illustrates my question is part 17:19 of the video
Most things have made sense during this lecture, but one persistent question I have is the following: why does the bicycle tilt toward the inside of the curve when you're turning the front wheel? If the momentum of the wheel is pointing to the left, and you make a turn towards the left, the change in the torque, based on the right hand rule, should be vertical, and upwards! So I would expect the bike to tilt towards the outside of the leftward turn using the definitions of angular momentum. I see in reality the bike tilts toward the inner part of the turn, this can be seen in those videos of high powered sports motercycles, where they turn so much, that they literally are inches from the concrete. Maybe I'm missing something, and this tilt into the turn has nothing to do with angular momentum, but something is keeping those bikes from falling over, I'd like to know why, let me know what you guys think, thank you!